The News Minute | December 4, 2014 | 03:58 pm IST
Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, the man known for 'humanising law in India', on Thursday passed away around 03:30 pm. The former Supreme Court judge passed away from a cardiac and renal failure resulting from pneumonia.
He had celebrated his 100th birthday just a month ago.
Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer is responsible for presiding over some of the biggest cases in the nation’s history; most famous for the Indira Gandhi vs Raj Narain case, which led to her declaring a nation-wide state of emergency. He is also the man who laid the foundation for Public Interest Litigation and prison jurisprudence in the country.
Justice Krishna was born on November 13, 1915 (according to the Malayalam calender) at Vaidyanathapuram near Palakkad in Kerala. In 1952 he was elected to the Kerala Legislative Assembly and in 1957 he became one of the ministers in the first Communist governments in Kerala which he served till 1959. Ten years later, he was appointed as a Judge in the High Court of Kerala and shortly after that he became a member of the Law Commission of India.
When he was sworn in as a Supreme Court Judge in 1973, several leading legal luminaries protested his inclusion. They opposed a politician being appointed as a Supreme Court Judge, as it was in conflict with the basic structure of the nation’s structure where the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary worked as separate arms.
Out of the 700 judgements he passed in his tenure as a Supreme Court Judge, here are some of the landmark judgements made by Justice V.R. Krishna that have contributed to making India what it is now:
In 1974, the judgement in the Shamser Singh vs State of Punjab case interpreted the powers of the Cabinet vis-à-vis the President. Justice Iyer later wrote about this in The Hindu and said,” The court, in Shamsher Singh (1974), laid down that the Indian administrative system is substantially based on the Westminster system where the Queen is bound to follow the Cabinet’s advice except in rare exceptions in which the Cabinet decision is irrational or arbitrary or perverse or plainly and blatantly biased or mala fide. In such an instance, the Governor may have the discretion.”
His judgement in the Indira Gandhi case in 1975 was controversial, and earned him both accolades and criticism. Krishna Iyer’s judgement snowballed the political crisis leading to the imposition of the emergency. On July 12, 1975, the Allahabad High Court held Prime Minister Indira Gandhi guilty of corrupt practice in the Lok Sabha election of 1971. The judge held her election to parliament as void and barred her from contesting elections for six years. In an appeal filed in the Supreme Court, Justice V R Krishna Iyer, granted a “conditional stay” on June 24, and barred Indira Gandhi from participating in debates or voting in Parliament and referred the matter to a larger Bench of the Court. By then the opposition was demanding that Indira Gandhi should quit office. Emergency was declared the very next day.
Here is an interview done by the mylaw.net where he explains the entire episode.
In Sunil Batra vs Delhi Administration case 1979, the practice of keeping undertrials with convicts in jail was regarded by the SC to be inhumane. This case questioned solitary confinement like the one observed in Shobraj’s case to be in violation of Article 21 which states that no person should be deprived of his life and personal liberty. The judgement laid the foundation for the implication of Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners recommended by the United Nations. It was this judgement passed by him that gave him the title of ‘Father of Prisoner Jurisprudence’.
Another significant judgement passed by Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer was for Ratlam Municipal Council vs Shri Vardhichand 1980. The judgement passed for this case laid the foundations of the responsibilities to be observed by a local municipal body, giving people the access to enforce public duties and held that municipalities and corporations are responsible for sanitation facilities.
In July, 1980: Justice Iyer wrote: “The budgetary constraints did not absolve the municipality from performing its statutory obligation to provide sanitation facilities.”
Justice VR Krishna Iyer is also known for laying the foundation of Public Interest Litigations in India. In the year 1981, he emphasised the need for relaxing the rules relating to locus standi to include those whose legal rights have not been directly violated, in the judgment Fertiliser Corporation Kamgar v. Union of India.
It was one of Justice Krishna Iyer’s judgements that redefined Article 21 to include liberties of travel. In the 1978 Maneka Gandhi vs Union of India case, where Mrs Gandhi approached the court as her passport was impounded by the Government of India, Iyer noted, “Personal liberty makes for the worth of the human person. Travel makes liberty worthwhile.”
In July 2010, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer was one of the few who had extended support to a campaign to introduce Islamic Banking and Finance in to India. In an article by The Hindu he said that “Islamic Banking provided the humane face to the business of banking and it took in to consideration the needs of the poor with kindness and compassion”. He continued saying that “Islamic banking was not limited to any particular community or faith but open to all”.
Soli Sorabjee and Justice Iyer
In 1973, Soli Sorabjee was one among many who vociferously opposed Krishna Iyer being made a Supreme Court judge. Later in 2004 Sorabjee, wrote a piece in the Statesman saying that he was wrong to oppose the Justice’s appointment as at that time he strongly believed that the appointment of a politically active being in the highest court would be disastrous. He even ended up becoming the chairman of the committee which organized Justice Krishna Iyer’s 75th birthday.